May 1945. Even though populations are celebrating Allied victory, the German defeat doesn't promise a better tomorrow. In the five years that separated the end of the Second World War from the start of the Cold War, the world had hoped for a lasting peace, but instead found itself on the brink of apocalypse. Five years of chaos and hope for the people of a shattered Europe, who became pawns in the games of the major powers. May 8th, 1945 : A terrible war finally ended in the smoking ruins of the Reich.

In the five years that separated the end of the Second World War from the start of the Cold War, the world had hoped for a lasting peace, but instead found itself on the brink of apocalypse. Five years of chaos and hope for the people of a shattered Europe, who became pawns in the games of the major powers. May 8th, 1945 : A terrible war finally ended in the smoking ruins of the Reich. The civilian populations celebrated the victory. It was a time for jubilation. But the celebration lasted little more than a few days.

In the darkest days of World War II, St. Peter’s was shrouded in the shadow of the swastika. But even as the Führer surrounded him, the Pope was plotting a secret counter-offensive. Wartime Pontiff Pius XII has been derided for his public silence about the Holocaust. But evidence suggests his silence may have been subterfuge. And the man branded as “Hitler’s Pope” may actually have wanted to eliminate him. Pope V. Hitler is a thrilling two-hour docudrama special that explores one of the least known stories of World War II – the role of the Vatican in the conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

This 5xCD box set from Cherry Red offers a compelling look at shoegaze's prime era. Still in a Dream takes a wide trawl approach to its genre, which has upsides and downsides. As with Rhino’s goth box A Life Less Lived, shoegaze is generously interpreted to include antecedents and formative influences, which bulks up the quality.

US-born historian of Europe Timothy Snyder first published Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin in 2010. In it, he argues that previous accounts of World War II have kept Nazi and Soviet crimes unduly separate, with much more attention paid to Adolf Hitler's atrocities than Joseph Stalin's. Snyder's view is that a definitive history of the period must depict the suffering of all of the conflict's victims.